Close to the edge of "The Leaf" we find two large frescoes cast in plaster: one is showing a blue cat sculpture reproduced four times with micro alterations; the other is showing images of Danserindebrønden by Rudolph Tegner conjoined like in a cinematic montage. The blue cat and the well both originate from the city of Elsinore where Kåre Frang grew up and were among the first public sculptures he became acquainted with as a child. The blue cat was standing in front of the artist’s kindergarten as a portal between different worlds. Here in the works they appear altered and intensified. In size and format, they refer most obviously to posters or public ads, but also more generally to the atmosphere of urban infrastructural space. They mix commodity aesthetics with a fluid, temporal visuality and connect past and present into a single-layered affect space.

The well is also referred to in a small model of a well cast in bronze and painted with acrylics in a double articulation of value enhancement and camouflage. The bronze well appears like a toy, a small prop, or a simplified sketch before the actual construction starts. It also suggests how a well might look, say in a comic book. It is placed in a transparent anti-theft box, as a kind of paradoxical item for consumption. Similar to the series of cats it is an object taken out of circulation and inserted in a new geography between the coordinates of a white cube - winter landscape - parking space.

Finally, next to cats and wells, we meet an abstract aluminium wall relief cast on top of a parking sign: A concentrated point where economy and the right to occupy a sector of the urban space unite in an image. The aluminium work looks like an aesthetic mix of glass mosaics, a traffic accident and watercolour workshops from art classes in primary school. It is simultaneously fragile and harsh, a kind of vandalism or meltdown that here comes to life again as a charred composition of colours, lines and words.

I, I. is an exhibition about visuality and observation, about seeing oneself from the outside or through the eyes of others and about the crossings between private and public space. It takes place at Kunstscenen but also spreads out to include works mounted on the windows of Bispebjerg Kollegiet across the parking lot. These window-based works are made together with the residents of the college dorms, making them participants in the exhibition. It doubles the show from one to a multitude of spaces and subjects. The works appear as pictograms or regulatory infrastructure of the kind that we normally encounter in public spaces, for example as road signs or barriers. Pictograms are traditionally employed to be quickly and efficiently decoded. Images such as a cross, an eye, or a hand all have conventional meanings that are perceived almost unconsciously and can thereby subtly regulate our behaviour without us thinking about it.

The works transform these convention-type images by making them more* unstable. They are reproduced as translucent surfaces, translated into other materials, or they shift colour in reaction to the light. In different ways the public code is put into doubt and set free for other, more private or ambiguous, interpretations.

At the opening, the exhibition will also include a 4-channel sound installation in the area surrounding Kunstscenen.

B. states that Kunstscenen reminds her of a filmset from the first westerns where they built sets outside and used the bright light from the sun to illuminate an indoor scene. It gives a special feeling of being inside and outside at the same time. She also shows me some chestnut animals placed in groups. Some of them are so close to each other that they are fighting for the same space. Others stand alone or ride their horses as if they are on their way. They are all silent and motionless yet full of life. The figures are not only a collection of things, but small people with feelings and intentions of pride, courage, anger and desperation. Their liveliness comes especially from their attitude and gestures, the way they push the room away, dwell in it, or steer towards a point in the horizon.

On the table between the chestnuts is also todays New York Times with a cover page article about Donald Trump. This conjures thoughts surrounding the idea of the West and the West's self-perception today. B. mentions that Rio Bravo, in addition to being the title of a movie and a river between the United States and Mexico, is also a danish political agreement on childcare from 83’.
Again, we speak of Kunstscenen itself and the area around it as a borderland between inner Nørrebro's intense festival atmosphere and Bispebjerg's almost nostalgically subdued everyday life. The location of the northwestern railway track makes it one of the city's blind spots. B. Retrieves a book with a text about Westerns written by film researcher Bazin. In 1953 he wrote that Westerns are “the humans confrontation with nature”, and that "the movement to the west is our odyssey".

Gargoyles are public sculptures in stone. We are familiar with them from the facades of medieval cathedrals where they are placed high above the ground representing fantastical or grotesque creatures. Balancing on the edge between sculpture and architecture, they often have a practical function as gutters to lead rainwater away from the building. Symbolically gargoyles were meant to ward off and protect against evil spirits by possibly being even more frightening than their imaginary adversaries. The name comes from the French word for throat and is mimetically related to the gurgling sound of water they emit in rainy weather when water flows through their open mouths.

Gargoyles appear as hybrids between humans and animals, horror and comedy, form and formless. They are carved by anonymous artists as collective expressions of fantasies or nightmares, but the best of them typically have individual characteristics pointing to highly personal interpretations of a shared form. They seem to make physical what is invisible to the official culture, similar to the fanciful drawings in the margins of medieval manuscripts. Gargoyles are peripheral entities originating from the popular culture throughout time, its obsessions and contradictions. They give form to that which we are not in control of or can't understand.

'En plein air' is the first exhibition on Kunstscenen. It is a group show that refers to the category of open-air painting, originating in French Impressionism with works painted outdoors directly in front of the motif. The paintings in the show are not necessarily painted out of doors, nor are they necessarily images of nature (although many of them actually are). But they are landscape paintings in the sense that they are shown and exist in the open air for a longer period of time, and will therefore be in continuous interaction with sunshine, rain, moss, trash, smog and humans. The natural surroundings are thus taking an active part in the show, they will change the works from one day to the next, in ways impossible to predict or control.

Kunstscenen

Kunstscenen is a new outdoor exhibition space by Magnus Thorø Clausen and Kåre Frang, located on an overgrown lot behind Bispebjerg Station in Copenhagen. It is built of a cast concrete floor and two walls making up a corner, yet does not have neither roof nor electric lighting. The exhibitions in Kunstscenen are therefore directly exposed to wind and weather, as well as natural light and shadows. The space brings to mind a section of a well-known gallery space or art fair booth yet here out of place and context. Over the next couple of months, we will launch transient exhibitions that will change in sync with the surroundings and maybe gradually disappear in nature. We are looking for ways of naturalizing the art context, to create a new space somewhere between art space, public space and nature, where the boundary to everyday life is less absolute.

Kunstscenen is open to all passers-by day and night. You can choose to only see the exhibitions in the night, or maybe early in the morning at sunrise.

See documentation photos here on this site or on our instagram account: kunstscenen.xyz